Guatemala's former dictator Efrain Rios Montt (1982-1983) leaves the courtroom after his pre-trial hearing in Guatemala City, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013. A judge in Guatemala has begun pre-trial hearings in a genocide case against former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who is accused of overseeing hundreds of killings when he ruled Guatemala from 1982 to 1983, at the height of the country's 36-year civil war. The war ended in peace accords in 1996, after 200,000 deaths. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)AP2013

Guatemala City – In a victory for human rights advocates and Guatemala's indigenous people, a former U.S.-backed dictator who presided over one of the bloodiest periods of Guatemala's civil war will stand trial on charges he ordered the murder, torture and displacement of thousands of Mayan Indians.

Human rights advocates have said that the prosecution of Jose Efraín Ríos Montt would be an important symbolic victory for the victims of one of the most horrific of the conflicts that devastated Central America during the last decades of the Cold War.

He is the first former president to be charged with genocide by a Latin American court.

Guatemala's leaders have been criticized for years for their inability or unwillingness to prosecute government forces and allied paramilitaries accused of marching into Mayan villages, carrying out rapes and torture, and slaughtering women, children and unarmed men in a "scorched earth" campaign aimed at eliminating the support for a left-wing guerrilla movement.

SUMMARY

Prosecutors allege that after leading a March 1982 coup and seizing control of the government, Ríos Montt oversaw torture, rape, forced disappearances and forced relocations and killings of thousands of Ixil people by soldiers, paramilitaries and other government officials.

Despite a series of international inquiries finding him responsible for war crimes, Ríos Montt served as a Guatemalan congressman for 15 years until he lost a re-election race late last year. He had held immunity from prosecution while a member of Congress and was put under house arrest after losing his post.

One of the highest priorities of the president who won last year's election, Otto Pérez Molina, has been campaigning for the elimination of a U.S. ban on military aid to Guatemala, which is locked in a fight against heavily armed drug cartels that have taken over swathes of the country.

Among the conditions set by the U.S. Congress for restoring the aid is reforming Guatemala's justice system and putting an end to impunity.

The decision to try Ríos Montt could stand as a precedent in the cases of dozens of other lower-ranking military men accused of participating in atrocities, victims' advocates have said.

Judge Miguel Angel Galvez ruled that Ríos Montt could be tried on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for the killing of 1,771 indigenous Ixiles in 1982 and 1983, when he was president.

The decision clears the way for a three-judge panel to hear the evidence against Ríos Montt and decide to either judge him guilty and sentence him, exonerate him of the charge or start a public trial.

Prosecutors allege that after leading a March 1982 coup and seizing control of the government, Ríos Montt oversaw torture, rape, forced disappearances and forced relocations and killings of thousands of Ixil people by soldiers, paramilitaries and other government officials.

His lawyers have sought to block the trial, arguing that he is protected by an amnesty law.

The attorney-general's office said that it found evidence of 5,271 killings of Ixil residents of the towns of San Juan Cotzal, Santa Maria Nebai and San Gaspar Chajul in the department of Quiche. Prosecutors said 1,771 died in some 15 massacres between 1982 and 1983, and 370 bodies have been identified.

Prosecutor Orlando Lopez said during hearings before Monday's decision that Ríos Montt wanted to wipe out the Ixil people, considered a bastion of support for guerrilla fighters waging a civil war against the Guatemalan state.

"During the period in which you held office, it is believed that the actions carried by members of the Guatemalan Army, military official and civil defense patrolmen resulted in the deaths of 1,771 people," the complaint against Ríos Montt reads.

The prosecution case includes forensic reports documenting hundreds of deaths.

Among the testimony presented to the judge was that of Ana Lopez, an Ixil woman taken from her home by soldiers in May, 1982 to a government outpost where she was tortured and raped for 10 days.

During the 1960-96 civil war, more than 200,000 people, mostly Mayan Indians, were killed or went missing and entire villages were exterminated, according to the United Nations.